A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 212 Calendar: Beginning of AD

Accompanied by the making of the Grand Ceremony of the Scholars by the Huai State Office, the scholars of all schools rejoiced.Many people traveled thousands of miles to Huaiguo Academy with slips of letters.

But anyone with a certain vision knows that this time, as long as he is selected into the Hundred Schools of Philosophy and his books are included in it, his name will last forever. How can such an opportunity be missed.

At the same time, the states of Bang and Zhou also got the news that Huai State wanted to revise the classics of various schools of thought. As kings, they quickly thought of the benefits of this matter. This matter can greatly improve the status of Huai State and help Huai State. The country gained orthodox status.

They were extremely unwilling, but the Huai country was so strong that the other countries dared not object at all.And what surprised them even more was that the original scholars of the country rushed to Huai country one after another.

Among Zhu Xia, there are many scholars, but not many who can be famous in the world, and except for those who have made great achievements in official positions, others only have some fables and allusions, and there are very few official history records.

Now that the Huai Kingdom has come forward to record the hundreds of schools of thought, this will naturally not be missed by those who want to keep their names in history among the Zhuxia countries and want to make their own theories popular in the world.

There are many schools of thought, all of which are comprehensive, and Huaiguo came forward to compile them, giving these people the opportunity to write books and biographies.

Huai State mobilized a lot of manpower and material resources to start compiling the theories of various schools of thought.

At the same time, Mohism began to study astronomy after developing in Huai state for a period of time.The territory of Huai State is vast, covering thousands of miles from north to south, and the climate varies greatly from place to place.The various food crops are grown in very different ways, and even the time of year they are cultivated varies.

For an agricultural country, food is very important, so when to plant and what crops to plant must be careful.

At first, Huai State only had an area in the Huaihe River Basin, and there was not much difference in the cultivation of food here. However, after capturing the land of Wuyue and Jingchu, the climate and environment changed drastically.

Therefore, more accurate cultivation time and food planting technology are needed.At this time, Huaiguo recruited scholars from the Mohist and peasant families to compile a calendar.

How important is the calendar?It is closely related to agriculture, represents the foundation of the country, and affects the entire course of history.

From ancient times to the present, human beings like to look up at the starry sky. The sun and the moon are also the two closest to human beings and have the greatest influence.

And since ancient times, human beings have worshiped the sun and the moon.Deified the sun and moon.And endowed with special meaning.

The emergence of the calendar was first summarized based on the changes in the positions and shapes of the sun and the moon.

Ancient ancestors discovered that the position of the sun has a huge impact on temperature changes.The appearance of the four seasons of the year is closely related to the position of the sun.

So people recorded the alternation of day and night according to the four seasons of the year.

The seasons change throughout the year, the distance of the sun is farther, the shadows of the stone pillars on the ground are longer, and winter is coming.The closer the sun is, the shorter the shadows of the stone pillars on the ground are, and it is summer.After winter, everything blooms and is full of vitality. This is spring. The vegetation is bleak, the fruits are ripe, and the crops are harvested. This is autumn.

The four seasons of the year go round and round, and the sages recorded the time of the four seasons of the sun. Each time the four seasons of the sun completes a round, this is called a 'year'.

So humans have the concept of years.

The change of the moon is more obvious, and the moon has cloudy, sunny, waxing and waning.The moon starts as a crescent, then grows up little by little, becomes a crescent, a half moon, and finally a full moon, and this pattern repeats itself.The ancestors of ancient times recorded this rule and called it 'month'.

So the earliest calendars "solar calendar" and "lunar calendar" appeared.

But people who have just appeared in the calendar don't know what this means.

When humans entered the farming age, the role of the calendar appeared.Cultivation and grain cultivation require accurate time. Once the time is not accurate, a few days earlier or a few days later will affect the harvest of grain.

So for the first time rulers began to calibrate the calendar to find the most accurate day for farming.

Later, in order to determine their orthodoxy, the rulers began to emphasize the 'first month'.

Since the Xia Dynasty, the Xia Dynasty has revised its own calendar and confirmed its own first month.After Yin Shang defeated the Xia Dynasty and established it, it also established its own calendar to confirm its own first month.

However, due to the limited cognition at that time, these calendars were not accurate, and there were many mistakes and omissions. More importantly, after hundreds of years, the errors of the calendars had reached an unbearable level.

After King Wu conquered business, Bang Zhou also established his own calendar, but this calendar also faced the problem of inaccuracy.The Huai State originally used Bangzhou's calendar, but as the Huai State continued to grow, the errors and omissions in Bangzhou's calendar became more and more serious.

Therefore, the calendar had been recalibrated as early as the time of Huaiwen Xianggong, but this set of calendars was only a revision based on the Zhou Dynasty calendar.Now that Huai State has occupied Chu State, the area is two thousand miles away, and Wang Pu is ready to revise his own calendar.

Like the revision of the Canon of the Hundred Schools of Thought, the revision of the calendar is also to confirm the orthodoxy of the Huai State.

The lunar and solar calendars are closely related, but they overlap each other with a gap of several days, which causes the seasons of the first month to change.

The beginning of a year must be in spring, and the harvest of grain must be in autumn.

The error of the solar calendar will lead to errors in farming. In the farming society, there is nothing more important than the land.

Huai State originally had a star observatory. Wang Pu ordered the officials of the Huai State to study the celestial phenomena together with Mohist disciples and peasant disciples, and then determined the farming time according to the changes in time, farming time, and harvest time over the years.

The exact calendar is calculated by the position of the sun, moon and stars.This project required a lot of time. Fortunately, the Mohists and the peasants had also conducted detailed research on time, climate, and astronomy, which was good news for Huaiguo.

Based on everyone's suggestions, Wang Pu started to build observatories in various parts of Huaiguo, allowing people from all over the country to study the astronomical phenomena, and then make summary calculations.

It takes a lot of time to study astronomical phenomena and compile a calendar.At the same time, Huaiguo found that the time of climate change and farming time were different in different places, so the sun and the positions of stars in different places were observed and recorded at the same time.

A large amount of data has been compiled and calculated, and the entire process has become extremely complicated.Even when studying these astronomy, the best astronomers and mathematicians in Huai country discovered a surprising problem.They found that the height of Beichen star varies with north and south.

The farther south you go, the lower the North Star, and the farther you go north, the higher the North Star, which led them to a conclusion that the earth is round.

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In the brilliant history of scientific development in ancient times, the development of astronomy is also amazing. The accuracy of the formulation of the calendar in ancient China is astonishing. Among them, the achievements of the ancient Huai State have attracted the attention of the world.

The birth of the Huaiwang calendar is epoch-making. It is the first calendar in the world that combines the Gregorian and lunar calendars. The second calendar that combines the Gregorian and lunar calendars did not appear until more than 500 years later.

Moreover, the error of this calendar is surprisingly small. Thanks to Wang's adjustment to this calendar, we still use this calendar more than 2000 years ago in our society.

What is even more unbelievable is that as early as 2000 years ago, ancient China discovered that the earth is round.All this is unbelievable, but it seems very reasonable to think of the country he was born in, and the family full of legends and even myths. ——"History of Ancient Astronomy"

(End of this chapter)